Xpresso – Neon Lights Combinations

[Steve Bentley]

Just having a first look – could it be that you are expecting the output of the switcher to be “1” or some other number? It’s not. In your default setup up, the output of the switcher is “true”. So in the equal node, “1”does not equal “True” (even though in many bool tests it does) and you get a false.
Will keep looking but though that might help.

[Steve Bentley]

Hmmm, somethings up. Initially the output of the Switch was a bool, which didn’t jive with the Equal. But after toggling the Switch to Bool and back to Real its now outputting numbers as you were expecting (and probably seeing).
This may be an issue with my brand new build of R19.
Let me keep looking.

[Steve Bentley]

My second post doesn’t seem to be showing up. Disregard the first and second – It was an issue with my system (the Switch node was being grumpy)
Can you simply unpack your x groups and send the output of the Equal node to each of the On and OFF texture nodes that are feeding the objects and feed it into the “On” port. Then on one of these pipes stick an Negate node in the middle so the result of the Equal node will be inverted for one of the On or Off nodes.

[Fabio Apelbaum]

Hi There! Thank you so much for the help!! Everything other than the results nodes are in Real, here is a similar test I was working on, but instead of using the enabled. I’m using the Active which from the explanation in the help, Active should be recognized by ether 1 or True. Nevertheless, the problem persists…. My knowledge of xpresso is very limited and I might be doing something wrong on how I am structuring this to get the results I want… could it be that there is a conflict between the two xgroups? Maybe there is a different approach to the same result?

Attached is my latest test:
12599_lightmixtest002.c4d.zip

Thank you once again for the help!

Fabio

[Steve Bentley]

I noticed that your “inputs first” is not checked in the Xgroups. You will need this so that the stuff that’s outside the Xgroup will be calculated first, otherwise the inner stuff gets down before looking at the input.

[Steve Bentley]

And is it just me? I don’t see any information going into the X groups. I assume you want the bool coming out of the Equals to be turning the On node on and Off node off or visa versa. Is that the intent?

[Fabio Apelbaum]

Hi there, thank you again for the help, I tried unpacking the xgroups and connecting the Equal Output to the Material On input, but nothing happens….

In the second sample I sent you, the setup is a bit different, I imported the xgroups as nodes to get access to the ‘Active’ preperty but that did not work as well…

Any other suggestions?

[Steve Bentley]

Just having a look now – the Cow interface seems a bit slow today, so the posts might arrive out of order.

[Steve Bentley]

I think I see the issue.
It looks (in rev 002) that you have selected the xgroups and then dragged them back in to use as nodes and you are sending an Active into this dragged in “iteration”. Unfortunately that has no effect on the original big xgroup. Is there a reason you can’t send a wire into the xgroups themselves? (the node is there on the input side but that node is not connected to anything inside)

[Fabio Apelbaum]

sounds good, to give you a clear direction of what I am trying to attempt is similar to this couple frames:

If you look at this two images, the lights in the background will be switching into different combinations…. my idea is to create 5 different presets that I can animate with ease. Let me know if you need more info.

Thanks,,
Fabio